Flophouses and arrests are milestones of a violent life

Carlos SadoviTribune staff reporter

Among the last places Jerry Branton Hobbs III called home before leaving this small town near the Oklahoma border was a junked car that sat in the backyard of the house his ex-girlfriend shared with his three children.

From the battered car where he lived and slept, Hobbs could keep an eye on the toffee-colored brick ranch home only yards away, where the woman, Sheila Hollabaugh lived with her new boyfriend.

"It was winter," recalled a neighbor, Linda Balser, whose husband, Larry, said Hobbs described himself as "something of a mechanic" and said he was going to work on the car.

"He was going to fix it but he never did," Larry Balser said.

In what had been a pattern during their stormy 10-year relationship, Hollabaugh let Hobbs back into her life in 2003 and the lives of her four children, three of them--Jerry IV, Laura and Jeremy--his.

As Lake County investigators focus their attention on this northern Texas town of more than 100,000 to build a portrait of the man they have charged with killing his 8-year-old daughter, Laura, and her friend Krystal Tobias, 9, in far north suburban Zion, they will discover a life marked by squalor and domestic abuse and fueled by anger, those who know him said.

Hobbs was a drifter who went from one flophouse to the next and found trouble at virtually every stop, according to interviews and court documents.

He did landscaping jobs for cash and briefly worked as a short-order cook at a local International House of Pancakes restaurant, where he was fired because of his temper, according to court documents and interviews.

Maria Barelski, a former restaurant co-worker, filed a report in 2002 with Wichita Falls police, notifying them that she had ditched her 1991 Chevy truck at a bus station before fleeing the state to get away from Hobbs.

"She left town in a hurry to get away from Jerry Hobbs," the report said, which contains no explanation of why Barelski feared Hobbs.

In an order of protection lodged against Hobbs in 2001, Hollabaugh had also told of fearing Hobbs, describing him as an alcoholic whom she had left the year before because he "physically abused me." Hollabaugh pleaded for him to stay out of her life.

"I'm scared he might try to come after me. I left him to get away from this," Hollabaugh wrote in requesting the order.

Since 1990 Hobbs has been arrested 29 times for drug violations, assaults and other infractions, said Wichita Falls police spokeswoman Sgt. Cindy Walker, tapping a six-inch stack of documents on the incidents.

"I think that would be a lot for someone a hundred years old, much less someone just over 30," Walker said. "He had a terrible, violent temper."

Hobbs' Texas path will lead investigators to a block dotted with abandoned shacks, where padlocks hang from doors, plastic sheeting serves as windows and taped-up notices threaten landlords with service cuts.

At one of those homes, which now sits empty with bone-dry tan paint flaking from its exterior, Hobbs had a bloody 1990 encounter with Stacey Townsend, according to court papers.

Hobbs, angry that Townsend was "spinning the tires on his car," pulled a knife from a sheath on his belt and stabbed him in the gut, according to the police report. The case was pleaded down to a misdemeanor, and Hobbs served a 60-day sentence in the county jail.

A haven for trouble

The area now is a haven for drug dealers and drinkers who sometimes take over the structures, said a woman neighbor who moved in only a few months ago.

"I won't even go outside, it's just too bad," said the woman, speaking from her porch stoop.

Wichita Falls--named for one of the Native American groups drawn to the area by its rich agricultural land--is the seat of Wichita County and grew on income from cattle and cotton. Oil production in the area peaked in the early 1950s.

Near the Wichita Falls Municipal Airport, which shares land with Sheppard Air Force Base, sits El Rey Trailer Park, where many of the hookups sit unused and some of the few trailers display signs warning people to stay away. It is a place marred by tragedy. One resident died from a beating. A woman died in a fire, and a baby was found dead.

Hobbs was arrested at the trailer park in 2001 after he started up a gas-powered chain saw and chased bystanders who were present when he attacked Hollabaugh after finding her with another man. According to Hollabaugh and one of the men he went after, Hobbs had been drinking and demanding his children, who were with their mother.

To stop the attack, bystanders knocked Hobbs down with a shovel and held him until police arrived. He was charged with felony domestic assault, which was reduced to a misdemeanor.

It's a case that even veteran Wichita County prosecutor Rick Mohler said stands out.

"It's the chain saw," Mohler said. "We deal with hundreds of [domestic assaults] a year. This one's the only one I've ever seen in more than 20 years where there was a chain saw."

Hobbs' mother, Joann Hobbs, and his stepfather, Don Coffee, live in a tiny brown home, one of four along a gravel road. The homes are flanked by North Texas State Hospital, a mental institution, and Lake Wichita, which neighbors say is too polluted for fishing.

Padlocks secure a chest-high chain-link fence at their home, and the few windows are blackened out. In the yard, two cats scramble past an RV camper, a 1965 Ford pickup and a three-wheel custom motorcycle.

In the yard, a children's white bicycle tire hangs on a rope dangling from a small tree. Neighbors said the couple's grandchildren were frequent visitors and often lived with them when the parents needed a hand.

"[Joann Hobbs] took care of them; it looks like they do that a lot," said Lewis Dickerson, a neighbor. "She was very proud of her grandchildren."

Another neighbor said Jerry Hobbs was taken in by his mother and stepfather when he needed help. The arrangement only lasted a few months before Hobbs' drug use and temper got him kicked out.

Don Coffee declined to comment.

While Hobbs was going from one address to the next, he failed to make any of the $300 monthly child-support payments ordered by the local court, documents show. He ended up spending a month in the county jail in 2002 after piling up more than $2,000 in failed payments, according to court records.

At the time, Hollabaugh was living in nearby subsidized housing.

She eventually moved into the home next to the Balsers, where she lived with a new boyfriend whose mother owned the house. Hollabaugh liked that her children could play with other children on the block and could walk to school.

`A move up'

"It was a move up," Linda Balser said. "She came from a bad area and said it wasn't safe for her kids. I think she wanted it to work here for her kids. She was trying to better herself; she just didn't know how to do it."

When Jerry Hobbs moved into the car behind the house, arguments between Hobbs, Hollabaugh and her boyfriend became commonplace. The house stuck out in the middle-class neighborhood for its late-night traffic, frequent police stops and loud arguments.

Linda Balser said Hollabaugh complained that Hobbs tried to be strict with the children, while she believed they should run free. It wasn't unusual to see their youngest child crossing the street in his diaper, Balser said. Hollabaugh said she took in Hobbs because of the children.

"She said that was their father and the kids loved him," Linda Balser said. "She was a single mother raising her children; she was trying, but it just fell in again."

Hobbs was arrested after violating his probation and spent about 18 months in a Texas prison, where he corresponded with Hollabaugh. After his release last month, he headed for Zion to once again be with her and his children.